What The 'Real' Money Thinks Of The Italian Election

With polls blacked out in Italy, the hope and hype is that Berlusconi doesn't get in, banish austerity, and bring the European OMT-inspired 'confidence' party crashing to the ground. While extremely low volume - and famously entirely wrong about Obamacare - the current Intrade odds favor Bersani massively at an 85% probability of becoming PM with comedian Beppe a mere 0.3% - even though it is somewhat ironic that he can still muster such support (for someone with a criminal record... umm Berlusconi?).

As a reminder, via Euromoney - Intrade traffic has collapsed in recent months since the end-November crackdown by the US government, prompted by allegations over improper betting. After hitting 287,000 unique visitors in November, Intrade traffic currently fails to meet ComScore reporting thresholds.

It's amazing. Every single time I've seen Berlusconi on camera with a woman - ANY woman - he will invariably at some point be seen staring at her ass. And this guy is 76 years old! Can you imagine what he must have been like when he was in his 20's? Bunga-Bunga, davvero!

I think both. I'm not so sure they're incompetent either because that would imply they don't know how to implement their corruption or criminal deeds. They would make them a sub-par criminal - oh wait, they are! To err is human, to really f(*k things up requires the US Govt.

The closing meetings of Italian elections are being held just now. Tomorrow it will be a "pause for reflection", and on Sunday and Monday (until 3 p.m.) there will be the vote.

After having followed the last week of the campaign, I would not be surprised of even a victory of 5 star Beppe Grillo's movement. My feeling is that in these days an "avalanche imitation effect" is taking place in Italy, and a lot of people now is declaring they will vote for M5S. Three weeks ago, most of them would not ever have thought to vote for M5S! Moreover, on Sunday and Monday wheather is forecasted to be very bad all over Italy, and this might hinder the vote of the elder, who are in general the least prone to vote for Grillo.

If they manage to overcome the other two main parties and get more than 30% of the votes (difficult, but not impossible), they will get the majority of 55% at the Camera (lower House). For the Senate, it is unpredictable. In any case, many tens, probably more than one hundred of PMs will come from the "real world", with no previous political experience, and with the goal to expose and block all "dirty tricks" of politicians. It will be a very interesting experiment, worth to be observed by all other OCSE countries!

The main trick here is whether Italy can successfully remove itself as a leg of the euro currency. Italy has 2,450 tonnes of gold. They can survive perfectly fine with their own currency. They would, for sure, be better off without the euro.

dariomilano is correct: grillo is not a candidate, he's just the speaker of the movement, of course he has 0.3%, and to be fairly correct: it should be 0! As for the rest, no matter whoever wins this country is screwed up. At least if M5S wins, there will be no more agony... and everything will end up sooner than later.